The Girls He Adored

54

The year is 1980. A Saturday night. Nine-year-old Alicea is hiding in her bedroom. Or at least wishing she could hide. She knows what's coming-she's been through it before. In a way, it's her job. More than her job: it's her reason for being.

As nine o'clock approaches, Alicea sneaks out of her room wearing only her underpants and tiptoes down the hall to her parents' bedroom. The door is ajar. She slips inside and locks it behind her, secure in the knowledge that it cannot be opened from the outside-all these years after Lyssy's dream, and the hole in the doorknob is still clogged with Superglue.

Feeling goosebumpy all over, Alicea strips off her underpants (in the process unconsciously tucking the male genitalia of which she is unaware back between her legs) and with her legs closed stands before the full-length mirror to examine her body. What she sees is very different from what Christopher sees when he examines himself in the mirror. The contours are more rounded, as if there were an extra layer of fat beneath the smoother, moister skin. And the dark hair is longer, the rib cage longer and narrower, the nipples slightly fuller. Best of all is the delicious smoothness between the tightly pressed thighs.

Nope, no question about it-Alicea, though enough of a tomboy to the eye that no one ever acknowledges her true gender, is a one-hundred-percent all-American thank-heaven-for-little-girls little girl. This is a good thing-she understands that if she were a boy, what she is about to be subjected to would be crushing, absolutely unbearable.

Reassured, she returns to her room. Downstairs the grown-ups are getting rowdier-the speed and the booze are beginning to kick in. She turns on her radio to drown out the noise. “Another One Bites the Dust,” by Queen. Alicea adores Freddie Mercury.

As always, Mother opens the door without knocking. Her eyes have that off-center look they get when she's high on meth, as if the irises were oblong and the pupils elongated.

“I see you're ready, for a fucking change,” says her mother spitefully, though Alicea is nearly always ready when they come for her-sometimes it saves her a beating.

The grown-ups are waiting for her in the basement. There are four or five of them tonight, all standing back in the shadows except for Carnivean, who sits on his black throne, under the red spotlight, naked save for the short goat horns set wide apart on his forehead.

When Alicea and her mother reach the bottom of the stairs, Daddy joins them. Like the others except for Carnivean, they're wearing loose-fitting robes. They walk her to the foot of Carnivean's throne. Grandly, rather like the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland, Carnivean gestures for Alicea to open her robe. She does so; he looks her up and down as if he hadn't seen her dozens of times before, nods approvingly, then steps down from the throne and takes her by the hand.

Her parents move aside; Carnivean leads Alicea over to the divan against the wall. She kneels, bends forward across the soft padded leather. He lifts her crimson cape and flips it over her head, enfolding her in a soft, incongruously private, ruby darkness. She rests her cheek on the back of her crossed hands and tries to tune out the pain.

Alicea knows of course that outside this basement Carnivean is really Mr. Wandmaker who owns the Harley shop where Daddy works. She also knows she must never say that out loud. Mr. Wandmaker took Daddy in when he was orphaned and taught him to be a mechanic, and where would we be without him? With his clothes on he looks big and powerful, but naked he's just gross fat, with a big hairy belly and saggy boobies like an old woman.

When she hears him begin to grunt she knows it's almost over-and also that the worst part is about to begin. For now his weight drops down full upon her and the slapping begins-her buttocks, the back of her thighs, her shoulders and head under the cape; the thrusts grow deeper and more frenzied.

Tonight this final stage seems to go on forever. Alicea feels a funny, pins-and-needles prickling in her head as his weight begins to squeeze the breath out of her. Just before she passes out from lack of air, though, she hears a voice in the darkness-the darkness inside her head, not the darkness under the cape. A man's voice- but not Carnivean's, not Mr. Wandmaker's. A somehow familiar voice, though she's never heard it before.

Alicea?

Yes?

I'm here. I'm going to take care of us now-I'll never let them do this to us again.

Who are you? she asks.

Call me Max, says the voice.